The main purpose of this blog is to keep in touch with friends and family, and maybe entertain others with common interests, particularly in relation to the outdoors. We hope you enjoy it, and your comments are valued....

Martin on the TGO Challenge 2017

Monday, 1 May 2017

Monday 1 May 2017 - Alcúdia and Puig Sant Martí

After a long lie in, our valid excuse being that we were up early yesterday AND we are one hour ahead of UK time, we enjoyed a pot of tea that didn't quite taste as much of dirty dishwater. Could someone have washed out the kettle using lots of washing up liquid?

Then the local Spar shop provided breakfast. Just like home! The Spar shops are really quite similar, and very close to us both here and at home.

The 352 bus that runs every 15 minutes took us efficiently to Alcúdia for a walk around the walls that offers good panoramic views from its high points. Before we knew it we were outside Can Polit restaurant and were enticed in (well, to a table in the sunshine) by its offer of a mixed Majorcan tapas meal. The restaurant was busy with a mixture of pensioners, grizzled cyclists on their lunchtime break, and families with pre school children taking advantage of the cheaper fares available outside school holiday time.

Duly satiated, we then embarked on the more energetic phase of our day. Mostly pavements took us to Playa Alcúdia and to the end of Avenida Pere Mas 1 Reus. On a bench opposite the ruby and white Edificio Siesta apartments, we scoffed the last of our provisions before braving a crossing of the bypass and, helpfully guided by route description number 41 in Charles Davis's Discovery Walking Guide, heading steeply up a pathless watercourse to the 268 metre summit of Puig Sant Martí. Yesterday's asphodel was vaguely still in flower; today's must have been caught by warmer sunshine as it had all gone to seed. There were a few other flowers amongst the scrub but it was wise to concentrate on making progress safely on ground studded with exposed rock and gnarly boulders.

Kestrels and paragliders competed for our attention high above us.

The summit consists of bare rock overlooking vertiginous rock faces up which, unbeknown to us at the time, a German climber was ascending. After yesterday's slither I took great care to pause whilst admiring the great panoramas, whilst descending safely to a lane at the col between our higher southern summit and the lower northern one which is adorned with telecommunications towers.

Then it was a gentle stroll, with the German climber precariously perched above us, through lovely pine woods interspersed with mountain bikers, back down to the bypass.

Across the road we came to the impressive grotto of Cova de Sant Martí. Sadly it was enclosed in a locked compound so we couldn't get in. Beyond that, a winding path through olive and pine woods brought us back to Avenida Pere Mas 1 Reus, along which a supermarket was found. Dinner provisions thus sorted, a bus stop at the end of the road was reached simultaneously with a number 2 bus that returned us to base.

Salad and burgers in the apartment were delicious. We thought the burgers would give off some fat and shrink a little. Not a bit of it - they remained an inch thick and were very tasty.

Our day's walking totalled about 15 km with 300 metres ascent, plus another few km by way of an after dinner stroll along the sea front.